Word: inert
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...have come all this way just to conquer these huts?" The Russians were inspired-not by liberty-but by what was literally a holy horror of the French; they would not even eat from a plate a Frenchman had touched. When they were brought to battle, they presented "inert masses" to the French artillery until the gunners themselves stopped, aghast at their slaughter. It had become a war of icon and tricolor. Ségur records his disillusion: "It was no longer a war of kings we were fighting, but a class war, a party war, a religious...
...teacher, I have long noted the increasing anti-intellectualism in our schools. The products of the teachers' colleges, who have entrenched themselves in positions of authority in every state, are, for the most part, intellectually inert themselves, know little or nothing about subject matter, and what is worse, contend openly and brazenly that knowledge of subject is of secondary importance...
From employees of Lever Bros, he drew volunteers, some to receive a vaccine, others to get only an inert substance for comparison. Dr. Ritchie wasted no time chasing the will-o'-the-wisp virus (or viruses) that cause the first stages of a cold. He concentrated on the bacteria, believing that they cause the most distressing middle stages. He took throat swabs and saliva from his subjects, threw away those from the 75 controls. From the other 109 he cultured the bacteria to make sure there were no deadly strains among them, then hand-tailored an individual "autogenous vaccine...
...surprise, Experimenter Ritchie found that the method seemed to work. The comparison group getting inert injections had colds five times as often as the vaccinated. Many of the vaccinated got sniffles for a day or two. presumably from the irresistible virus, but then their colds usually stopped: during the test, they had only 13 "full colds," as against 77 for the controls...
...subjects to the drugs or helping resistant strains of microbes to emerge, he decided to use very small doses, in tablets to be sucked twice a day when the first sniffles appeared. Ritchie used the three closely related antibiotics of the tetracycline group in 581 volunteers, and an inert tablet for comparison in 338 others. Results were slightly better than with the vaccine: 26 full colds per 100 volunteers on dummy tablets, only four per 100 on the antibiotics. In some cases the antibiotics caused severe irritation (sore throat or "flayed tongue"); vitamins are being tried to prevent this effect...